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Aug 22, 2016

How Would It Be If You Increased Your Software Business Profits By 30% Without Working More Or Charging More

I know it is a strong promise, but what would it be like if you grew your software business profits by 30% without working more or charging more?

The software business has its challenges. People say tech is everywhere; software is eating the world. While this might be a part of the truth, there are certain blocks in this business that keep you, the business owner, in a stagnation or a linear growth. The dark side of the software business is something you do not hear the non-tech people talking about.

In the business of software, if you are not growing fast enough, your competition will. Sooner than later, what you call now “my customer”, will become “their customer”. This is how things work in software.

What Growth and Competition have to do with 30% increase in profits?

There is a strong correlation between the current business profits, the way you run your business, and the future of your business. If you are not adapting to the fast changes in technology, your business will become obsolete.

And here’s the key. To change and adapt, you need resources. Whether we refer to time or money, you need them to stay in business.

Consider the Amazon.com growth. Without investing in their infrastructure and better technology, they could have never grown to the size they are today. The business name itself suggest what it was meant to become.

The Amazon River in South America is the largest river by discharge of water in the world, and the longest in length.

The first step towards 30%

The first step you need to make towards 30% is to look at your business and its processes. Ask yourself these questions:

How often am I releasing software versions in this moment?

What is my internal testing procedure for the code I am releasing?

What features do I decide to implement, which to ignore, and which to remove from my product?

release period: choose your release period based on your team apptitudes. This time should be long enough for your team to test the software in the most common scenarios. If you spend too much time trying to release a perfect product, customers might look somewhere else for the features you are planning to release

automated tests: look for the patterns and critical parts of your product. There are cetainly some core parts that aren’t changing very often and they might have some automated tests associated. Spend time once, reuse again and again

do not implement new features unless you have data that proves their need. Customers are an open book for you

spending many hours on customer support? You might be doing something wrong. Which type of tickets do you receive? How many are directly correlated to software issues, and how many are due to the lack of documentation about how to use your product?

Ask these questions, look for the answers, and let us know what you found.

Meanwhile, join our subscribers list. In the next series, we will offer more specific tactics and tips on how to grow your software business profits.